Ajax Plumbing LLC / Bentonville, VA · Boiler Installation
Bentonville Boiler Installation Sized to the house, not the old nameplate
The boiler in a Bentonville farmhouse has usually outlasted two or three additions by the time it finally gives out. Replacing it means heating the house as it stands today, kitchen wing and back bedroom included. We are a father and son out of Front Royal, and we size, set, pipe, and fire the new one ourselves.
540-671-5417No heat? Ring usThe plate on an old boiler tells you what somebody chose decades ago for a smaller, draftier house. It says nothing about this one. Some farmhouses have grown since then. Others got new windows and a properly insulated attic and now lose less heat than they used to. Copying the nameplate gets one of those wrong, and you live with the mistake every winter after.
Size the boiler to the house you heat now, not to the tag on the old one.
Sizing for the house you have now
Before we talk about a model, we work out what the building actually needs. Four questions settle most of it.
Heat loss, room by room
We walk every room and write down floor area, ceiling height, window count, what is above it in the attic, and whether it sits over a basement or a crawlspace. That adds up to the heat the house sheds on a hard night, and that number picks the boiler. Too big and it short cycles, burns more fuel than it should, and wears out early. Too small and the far bedroom never warms up.
Additions on their own loop
A house that grew across a century often heats different wings off different piping. The original rooms might run cast iron radiators while a later addition got copper baseboard tied in wherever it was convenient. Those two want different water temperatures and different flow. We trace which rooms hang off which pipe before choosing anything, because that map decides how the new boiler gets piped.
Zoning the cold room
Every added-on farmhouse seems to have one room that is always too hot or too cold, and it is nearly always the addition. Giving it a zone of its own, with its own thermostat and its own valve or circulator, fixes the cause instead of the symptom. Sometimes the existing layout is fine as it is, and we will tell you that too.
Hot water from the boiler
If the house already makes its hot water off the boiler, or you would like it to, an indirect water heater handles it. It is a storage tank warmed by a coil of boiler water, with no burner of its own. We size the tank to how your family actually uses water and pipe it so the showers get served first when both calls come in.
Wall-hung or floor-standing, and the parts around it
The old farmhouse boilers we pull out are mostly heavy floor units parked beside a chimney in the basement. A lot of replacements now are compact wall-hung boilers that vent out the side of the house. Neither one is right by default. Wall-hung frees floor space in a tight utility room and can hang close to where the piping already runs. A floor unit can make more sense where the chimney, the fuel supply, or the existing piping already suits it. We look at the room first and recommend from there.
The boiler is only part of a closed heating system. It also needs an expansion tank sized to the water in the pipes, an air separator so the upstairs radiators stop knocking and gurgling, a fill valve, a relief valve that discharges somewhere safe, and circulators that move the right amount of water. Old radiator systems carry sludge, and a new boiler with narrow passages does not tolerate it. We flush the loop and decide whether a dirt separator belongs ahead of the new unit.
The far bedroom tells you whether the sizing was right.
Fuel and venting get checked on every install. On oil that means the tank, the line and the filter. On propane we confirm the line can feed the new boiler along with everything else on it. Either way the vent route has to suit what we are setting. If the old chimney is being retired, anything else still venting into it, a water heater for instance, has to be dealt with as well. We would rather find that while we are pricing the job than at startup.
Have a question before you book? Call 540-671-5417 and tell us how old the boiler is, how many additions the house has, and which rooms run cold. The full boiler installation page covers this work across the valley.
The night it quits in January
Bentonville sits low along the South Fork of the Shenandoah, and the valley bottom holds the cold. Old boilers have a habit of dying on the worst night of the year, because that is the night they are pushed hardest. Our emergency line runs 24/7, and one of us answers it. If the boiler can be brought back safely for now, we do that and talk about replacement in daylight. If it cannot, the first job is keeping the house from freezing while the old unit is out.
That means looking at the lines most likely to go first: supply pipes in the crawlspace, runs along outside walls, the well house if there is one, and any heating pipe that passes through a cold space. We drain what needs draining and tell you plainly what to keep an eye on overnight. When something does freeze and split, we repair the line properly, and frozen water line repairs are 10 percent off because down here that is a winter-long problem.
See finished work in the project gallery, or set up a visit through the contact page.
Bentonville is a straight run south on Route 340 from our shop in Front Royal, following the river toward Luray.
More we handle down Route 340
A boiler swap tends to turn up other jobs in an old house, and sometimes it is part of a bigger project already underway. The rest of our Bentonville work lives on these pages.
Opening up the mechanical room in an old house usually means a look at the bath someone added on decades after it was built, and gutting that one properly is bathroom plumbing remodeling. While the water is off we can change a kitchen or laundry fixture and the seized shutoffs behind it as part of faucet installation. If you are building on one of the slopes off Panhandle Road or Rocky Lane, the heat gets planned with everything else under new construction plumbing. And if you want to see the old drain under the house before you spend money near it, we run a video camera pipe inspection first.
From our shop in Front Royal it is fifteen to twenty minutes south to Bentonville, and Rileyville sits just down the road, so this end of the valley is part of our normal week. We are backflow certified and certified on most water heater brands. The Bentonville page covers everything else we do in town, and the Warren County hub lays out the rest of our route.
Boiler questions from the south end of the county
Can you just put in the same size boiler I have now?
We can, but we would be guessing. The old unit was sized for the house as it was when someone installed it, before additions, new windows, or attic insulation. We work out the heat loss of the house today and size to that. Sometimes the right answer comes out close to the old one, and often it does not.
Should I go wall-hung or keep a floor boiler?
It depends on the room and the piping. Wall-hung units save floor space and vent through the side wall, which helps in a cramped utility room. A floor unit can fit better where the chimney and existing piping already suit it. We look at your mechanical space before recommending either one.
The addition is always cold. Will a new boiler fix that?
Not by itself. A cold addition usually comes down to how it was tied into the heating loop, not the boiler. Giving that wing its own zone with a separate thermostat is what evens the house out. We trace the piping first so we know which rooms share a loop and which do not.
Can the new boiler make our hot water too?
Yes, through an indirect water heater. That is a storage tank warmed by a coil of boiler water, so it has no burner of its own. We size the tank to how your household uses hot water and pipe it so showers come first when the heat and the hot water both call.
Our boiler quit tonight and it is freezing. What happens first?
Call the emergency line, which runs 24/7 and rings to one of us. If the boiler can be brought back safely for now, we do that. If it cannot, we protect the lines most likely to freeze, starting with the crawlspace, outside walls, and any well house, and plan the replacement after.
Do you check the fuel line and venting when you swap a boiler?
On every install. We check the oil tank and line, or make sure the propane line can feed the new boiler along with everything else on it, and that the vent route suits the unit going in. If the old chimney is being retired, we sort out anything else still venting into it before startup.
Old boiler on its last winter?
Tell us how old it is, how many times the house has been added onto, and which rooms run cold. One of us will call you back. Get a free quote before anything gets ordered.
No heat tonight? Call 540-671-5417, 24/7.